Yves Bouthillier
Yves Bouthillier (26 February 1901 – 4 January 1977) was a French politician who had been an inspecteur des finances who served as Minister of Finance in the last two Cabinets of the French Third Republic and subsequently in the same position for the French State government, from 1940 to 1942.[1]
Bouthiller was said to be one of the ablest economic technicians to serve the French government. In November 1942 the Pariser Zeitung newspaper declared that 70% of French exports now went to Germany. In the same year, Wladimir d'Ormesson, writing in the Figaro newspaper, stated: "Let us think what France was like in June 1940, when all was lost, when all was topsy-turvy......Yet today it is a tour de force that, despite the prevailing conditions, the financial and economic life of the country continues to function." Considering the terrible strain on French finances created by the daily payment of 400 million francs to the German army of occupation, France came, financially, better out of the four years of occupation than might have been expected. The depreciation of the franc between 1940 and 1944 had been less rapid than in the years that were to follow.[2]
